Frozen 2 director says Elsa will not come out as gay in the film
Jennifer Lee, who has co-directed Frozen 2, says there is a lot more on Elsa’s mind than a romantic relationship, with anybody.
Elsa’s sexuality has been a point of discussion ever since Frozen came out in 2013, and there have been speculations that she might come out of the closet in the upcoming Frozen 2. The movies co-director Jennifer Lee says the sequel will not delve into that aspect of her life because she is not ready for a relationship.
Instead, Frozen 2 is about Elsa trying to find herself, and embracing her powers. After Frozen, people from all over the world thought that Elsa can be Disney’s first LGBTQ princess, and started campaigning for it in 2016 by starting a #GiveElsaAGirlfriend campaign to push the studio to give her a gay love interest in the second part.
Despite hundreds of fan theories about her sexuality, Elsa won’t have any type of romantic partner in Frozen 2.
“When we started making the first part, in the very beginning, when we were grounding ourselves in the characters, we did some personality tests to ask real deep questions about who the characters are and what are they wrestling with,” Lee said during a round-table discussion at the Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank.
“One thing that came out clear was that she wasn’t ready for a relationship at all. She was still getting used to the fact that people were accepting her and she still had so many questions about her powers,” she added.
Lee continued: “From the start, that’s where we knew we were going. The big thing with this film is that this woman is carrying the weight of the kingdom on her shoulders and is wrestling with this extraordinary power. It was this feeling on which she is focusing on and that is a lot.”
The 48-year-old asserted that they “get a lot of requests for what they want us to do with the characters”. “If we take that on, we’re building it from the wrong way. So we had to say Where is she now?, What is important to her? What can she handle in her life right now,” added Lee, who was the first woman to direct a Disney animated feature film.
With Frozen, Lee along with Chris Buck narrated a tale of two sisters -- fearless and optimist Anna who goes on a journey along with a man named Kristoff and his reindeer companion Sven to bring back her sister Elsa, who has icy powers, to save their kingdom of Arendelle from eternal winter. The movie defied the tradition of fairy tales, by putting sisterhood first in the line of love, and then redefining the “act of true love”.
“At the end of the day, there are moments when our characters go from where you only have yourself and people lose hope in that situation. They hold on to look inside and find a power inside and embrace that. It can be hard and challenging but it’s so important,” she said.
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In that case, real life becomes inspiration for the fantastical story. “We build it again from things we’ve gone through in life, in our families, what our kids go through. Looking at Anna and Elsa, they carry a lot of responsibility. I’m proud of them for that. But I always feel like we can project it from real life and we all have those moments. It was less about sort of coming from outside in on the themes versus building them from the real human conditions and things we go through,” Lee explained.
The second part of the Disney franchise promises to be more intense as it traces the pasts of Princesses Anna and Elsa, voiced by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel in Hollywood version, respectively, and piece together their present. Frozen 2 will release in India in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on November 22.
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